Innovation

Supaskyka "Young Kid"
Posts: 23 Joined: 29-12-05 Location: Anaheim, CA, USA
Submitted by Supaskyka on 20 April, 2008 - 18:54.

Would a libertarian socialist economy allow for the same level of innovation that capitalism claims to foster? And how so? Is competition between businesses really the cause for the rapid technological innovation we experience today? I wonder, I really do. cuz that's what they tell me in secondary school.

-Timoteo

ronan
Posts: 283 Joined: 26-06-05 Location: Dublin, Ireland
20 April, 2008 - 19:06

most anarchists would argue that creativity is innate to humans, within language for example we are given a set of words and rules of how to use them, and people create an endless variety of sentences with this set of tools. throughout human history people have created and developed new things, before capitalism was ever thought of.

even within capitalism many people do not create things for a profit, they do it out of curiosity, generosity or just by fiddling around, take for example the free software movement.

in capitalism human creativity is taken and forced to fit the interests of a small group of people, those who profit from it. life saving inventions are patented resulting in unnecessary death, and the talents of billions of people are wasted in the lower echelons of the workforce.

check out the Anarchist FAQ here for more discussion.

Bob Savage "brrrapatista."
Posts: 1157 Joined: 15-01-07 Location: Bristol
20 April, 2008 - 20:28

In a communist society, there won't be loads of gadgets being made all the time i imagine. like latest phones and mp3 players, all just slowly getting better than the last. but as for stuff such as playstations, then yeah i imagine technological innovation will continue. as long as people are passionate about stuff, such as gaming, there's no reason it'd cease to exist without profit.

ein auslander
Posts: 312 Joined: 25-12-06 Location: london
20 April, 2008 - 20:38

I think a certain amount of technological innovation can induce happiness - ie. in the medical field (unless ofcourse you were the unlucky victim of an iron lung for example in which case you probably wished you hadn't survived) but in other fields it is interesting to make comparisons with other countries that have been denied technology and have slowly been introduced to it.

ie. Iran and certain films / television channels

Bhutan - internet / television

"innovation" is difficult to monitor as well

the button "jesus christ, john, have you actually even read any marx?"
Posts: 5636 Joined: 07-07-04 Location: Lewisham, London
20 April, 2008 - 22:14
Bob Savage wrote:
In a communist society, there won't be loads of gadgets being made all the time i imagine.

cry

Communard "de omnibus dubitandum est"
Posts: 49 Joined: 27-11-07 Location: Italy
20 April, 2008 - 23:12

without patent rights and free from "market", innovation can be even faster....
moreover, in a communist society everyone will can get an hi-level education. More scientists = innovation.
Who knows how many potential scientists are starving and/or illiterate peasants in some unlucky area of the world, now....

Django
Posts: 109 Joined: 18-01-08 Location: York UK
21 April, 2008 - 22:14
Communard wrote:
without patent rights and free from "market", innovation can be even faster....
moreover, in a communist society everyone will can get an hi-level education. More scientists = innovation.
Who knows how many potential scientists are starving and/or illiterate peasants in some unlucky area of the world, now....

Here here.

Rather than research being literally owned by private interests who have an incentive to keep it secret until it hits the marketplace, information technology really gives us the ability to make research, experiment and innovation available to those who need it - through federations of workers councils, syndicates etc, in a libertarian socialist society.

lrnec
Posts: 91 Joined: 29-10-07 Location: Belfast
22 April, 2008 - 12:03

Not to mention the vast increase in quality of certain products and the speed at release.

DVD’s were invented and ready to be released long before they were but were delayed due to the attempt to flood the consumer with the VHS format first, the same is happening with the new blue ray and High definition something. It’s just “good marketing” This way they get to sell the same product practically once every new format as opposed to bringing out the new format as fast as possible before the average consumer has had time up update his collection to all dvd/blueray etc. Just using the media format as an example but it happens all over especially in more industrial environments outfitting factories etc.

That’s without even mentioning the designed faults built into products so that they break long before a well made product would. Heh then to make even more money they offer you a warranty or insurance for a bit extra knowing in full that the product is designed to last or break after the warranty runs out.

Supaskyka "Young Kid"
Posts: 23 Joined: 29-12-05 Location: Anaheim, CA, USA
1 May, 2008 - 03:24

Recently I've heard that most of the innovation that has any benefit to human-life actually gets done in universities and research centers funded by the public. So higher-education for all sounds real good.

ncwob "'I hope the bourgoeisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day' - K. Marx "
Posts: 527 Joined: 05-10-07 Location: North Carolina
1 May, 2008 - 03:44
Supaskyka wrote:
Recently I've heard that most of the innovation that has any benefit to human-life actually gets done in universities and research centers funded by the public. So higher-education for all sounds real good.

Yeah, most preliminary medical and pharmaceutical research is done by the National Institute for Health, a US gov't agency, and then turned over to private companies. To paraphrase Gore Vidal: public risk, private profit = socialism for the rich.

Reverend Tap
Posts: 45 Joined: 09-04-08 Location: USA, Colorado, Fort Collins
1 May, 2008 - 22:28

The hell? I know I posted here a few days ago...

In any case. As with anything else produced under a capitalist system, innovation is subject to cost-benefit analysis. In markets and times when it is profitable for a company to promote innovation, it will do so as quickly as it is able; conversely, the moment that profitability ceases, so does the innovation. It's just good business sense. To take a couple of brief examples, look to the pharmaceutical, auto, and energy industries. What motivation do the heads of business in those fields have to, respectively, find cures rather than treatments for diseases, manufacture truly fuel-efficient vehicles (I am told by people who know more about cars and the industry than I do that 50-60mpg should, by all rights, be doable right now), or do significant research into alternative energy sources that would require a complete overhaul of company infrastructure?

With the advent of a libertarian socialist economy, I would expect to see an overall increase in innovation in fields which actually better people's daily lives, though certainly progress in markets whose social value is currently manufactured would slow and perhas halt entirely.